The playground

If any of you reading this are on MySpace as one of my "friends" then you already know about "The Playground." If you aren't on MySpace, then let me get you up to speed.

Back in early December, Heather decided she wanted Ansley to have a playground in the back yard, so she got her one from ToysRUs. She had searched around for a few weeks comparing prices, reading reviews, etc.. After her research she settles on the one we purchased. The reviews were mixed. Some were saying it was great, some were saying it was too hard to build, too flimsy, blew away in a storm, whatever. The more we read into it, the it seemed, if people knew what they were doing, they could build it, if they didn't know the difference between a hammer and a jigsaw, they said the playground sucked. So, we purchased it. It came in 4 boxes, one of them being the slide by itself. The rest was wood pieces and all the hardware. True to the reviews, none of the pieces were marked. But, in the instructions, it says to inventory and lay out all the pieces. So that's what I did. I even laid them out as to what page they were on in the manual. All the pieces on page one were laid in one pile, page two another and page three another. If you knew the difference between a 1x6, a 2x4 and what a 5/4 piece of wood was, and could and work a tape measure, it was no problem. It took about 2 hours to sort through it all, but all the parts were there. I didn't inventory the hardware because there were about 400 pieces of screws, bolts, washers, etc. I just figured whatever was missing, I could pick up at Lowe's.


I worked on the playground on and off for 3 weeks. If I had about 5 full 8-10 hour days, I could have finished it within a week. But, I only had an hour or two on any given day with one full 6 hour Saturday thrown in there prior to Christmas to try and finish it. It wasn't a Santa gift, so it wasn't imperative it was done prior to Christmas, but it would have been nice. Then, we also got a few days of badly needed rain, so I couldn't work on it at all for those days, not to mention days I had to work and other engagements we had to attend. But, after all was said and done, 1 day past three weeks of working on it, it was completed. I had people offering to help on it, but it was really a one person job. One step had to be completed before you could move onto the next. I did build all the separate parts on it first before I started putting the big pieces together. It seemed to make the overall building process go smoother. I didn't have to stop, build a piece, and mount it. I built them all, them mounted them when the time called for it. So, 99.9% of it was built by myself. There was a time or two I could have used another set of hands, but no one was really around, so I just made do.

It was a fun project to build and after seeing Ansley on it this morning, it was worth every bit of time, blood sweat and money put into it. (No tears, it wasn't that hard to build)

The pictures: Top: The pieces prior to sorting.
Middle: The finished product.
Bottom: The reason for it all.

Just a Rant

Now, I’ll be upfront, this isn’t some politically correct write-up. If you have a problem with people voicing their opinions on touchy subjects then you might want to go to a different web page right now. I’m not writing this to make any friends. I’m writing it to get it off my chest. You’re welcome to read it, but remember, it’s my opinion and my opinion alone. If you agree, great. If not, great also. It’s a free country.
It’s one of those times that, whenever I look at the news, I get mad. You read what’s going on and you wonder how we’ve been able to make it as far as we have considering how many STUPID people there are out there. Looking at today’s headlines… Now granted, I’m picking out the stories of stupid people and not the “feel good” stories, but I’m trying to prove a point here.
The biggest headline right now is the idiot that shot 8 people in the mall in Nebraska. Some of his last words were, “I’ve been shit all my life, now I’m going to be famous.” Umm. No, you’re an idiot. Now, not only are you an idiot, you’re a dead idiot. No one will even remember idiot’s name in 2 weeks. They’ll just remember that some idiot killed 8 innocent people in Nebraska a few weeks before Christmas. That’s not famous, that stupidity.
I won’t go into the stories of people accused of killing their children. That just makes me furious. I’ll just say if the State doesn’t want to foot the bill for the electricity to fry them or the drugs to inject them, hand them to me. I’ve got some left over ammo from the gun range I’ll be happy to donate. I’ll even pull the trigger and not charge the government for my services. Those people do not deserve to live and I don’t deserve to have to pay for their food and lodging in jail. Guilty = BAM!!! Easy enough.
Then you have the case of the “Teddy Bear Teacher.” A British teacher who was teaching in the Sudan allowed her kids to name a teddy bear they were to take home, care for and write a journal about, whatever they wanted. The kids named the bear “Muhammad.” Big deal. When I was over in Saudi, I met about 30 guys with that name. It’s a popular name and used all over the place. Well, true to idiotic extreme Islamic stupidity, the rag heads arrested her. She could have gotten 40 lashes with a whip, 6 months in jail and a fine. Some of them were even calling for her execution. For letting kids name a freaking TEDDY BEAR??????!!!! Her actual sentence was 15 days in jail and deportation back to Britain. Sounds to me like they did her a favor. I’m beginning to wonder why we even bother trying to deal with those people. I say let them blow themselves up. Honestly, if Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan, Saudi, etc, etc, etc were to go away, would you miss them? I highly doubt it. Would you feel safer in your country knowing they were all gone? Probably so. I say we all go out and buy a pot bellied pig as a pet and name them all Muhammad. It’s a free country and we can do and say what we want. Of course, that would probably get your house car bombed by some jackass that is living illegally here in the States. Just another reason to let them all blow themselves up. If nothing else, get all of the illegal aliens (not just Islamic, but Mexican, Puerto Rican, and any other ILLEGAL alien) out of here. Deport them all!!!! If you don’t pay taxes, go back home. Of course, this is where our own government fails us by doing nothing about this problem. I went on a bit of a tangent there, but 9-11 wouldn’t have happened if those people weren’t in this country.
Now this isn’t anything from the news, but a “discussion” my wife and I had the other night. She was telling me about a co-worker who has had her house broken into twice and attempted break-ins two other times. She said she is worried her husband or 15 year old boy is going to be home at the wrong time and do something they would come to regret. I asked what they could do that they would regret. She said “kill whoever breaks into the house.” My question to that was, “Why would they regret it?” That’s when the “discussion” started. I do not understand how someone could feel guilty about injuring, maiming or killing someone who has broken into your house with the intentions of committing a crime. And, she does not understand how I could not understand. Now, I am military and I’ve been in situations where it almost came to the point where it was going to be “them or me.” I made up my mind a long time ago that, if it came to that point, it was going to be them without a doubt. And that was on military deployments. If you think that mindset is going to be any different when I’m in my own house, you are gravely mistaken. If nothing else, I am even more adamant about it. If someone breaks into my house at 2:00 am, they aren’t there to bake me a cake. They are there for no good reasons. So, as far as I’m concerned, if you break into my house in the middle of the night, I promise you that you will be carried out in a bag. You won’t have a chance to sue me for hurting you because you’ll be dead. How will I feel about it the next morning? When I see my wife and baby sitting there all safe and sound, I’ll be just fine about it. If it takes more than one shot, I may go to the range to work on my aim a bit, but I will have no regrets.
Well, I don’t know about you, but I sure do feel better. Feel free to comment if you want. Please remember, just as these are my opinions and my opinions alone, this is also my space in the web, so I also choose what comments get posted. So if you disagree, feel free to comment, but death threats won’t get posted. : )